April as a synonym for beginning

I keep thinking about this first day of April
—so thin, March’s cheek is pressed against the morning
How the air quenched with spring will soon be thirsty again
How this day, fast and forgettable like a year, is still a day
I keep thinking about
the lake of sadness in me
How violent it is to drown within oneself
How tragic to re-enter the mouth of your suffering and still kneel to its hunger

Yet still April is bright and forgiving
and each chirping bird is reinventing its pocket of the sky with song
and maybe despite all this,
life itself is not a wound
Tenderness, swallow me whole
let me enter another April
with hope dancing between my ribs.

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Jessica Thiru is a Kenyan poet born and bred in South Africa. Her work appears in Button Poetry’s 2023 video contest and Querencia Press’s Not Ghosts, But Spirits IV. Her poems explore the morphing space between becoming and noticing. Her first chapbook, Burning of Absence, is forthcoming with Querencia Press. You can find her on Instagram at @leechteeeth and Tumblr at @leechteethwrites.